Malaysia Seeks Help To Expand Search For MH370 Debris

A suitcase discovered near the debris will be studied at a criminal investigation laboratory in Pontoise, near the French capital, the Paris prosecutor’s office said Friday.

Shortly afterwards, another man went to the police boasting a piece of debris measuring 70 centimetres (27 inches), guessing it was part of a plane door. Separately, three French magistrates as well as a Malaysian legal representative and an official from France’s civil aviation investigating authority are expected to hold a meeting behind closed doors in Paris tomorrow.

Mauritius said on Monday it would do all it can to search in its Indian Ocean waters for possible debris from Malaysia Airlines’ missing flight MH370, after wreckage washed up on nearby La Reunion.

Flight MH370 was travelling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March 2014 when it vanished with 239 people on board.

Relatives said in a statement that, even if the wreckage is confirmed to be part of missing MH370, it should not dampen the resolve to find the rest of the wreckage, the whereabouts of all passengers and the reasons for its disappearance.

Airplane debris that washed up on the island of and may belong to the vanished arrived in on Saturday for investigators to study its origin.

But, Malaysia’s prime minster said the location where the wing part was found is “consistent with the drift analysis provided to the Malaysian investigation team.”

Reunion Island local Nicholas Ferrier said he burned a blue seat and several pieces of luggage that could have come from the aircraft, thinking they were insignificant pieces of trash. “We are all convinced that it belongs to this flight (370)”, said aviation security expert Christophe Naudin on France’s BFM-TV.

In this photo dated Wednesday, July 29, 2015, French police officers carry a piece of debris from a plane in Saint-Andre, Reunion Island.

The flaperon has been shipped to France where experts are to begin examining it on Wednesday.

Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai told AFP that civil aviation authorities were reaching out to their counterparts in other Indian Ocean territories to be on the lookout for further debris that could provide “more clues to the missing aircraft”.